Steve Fleischman

Using School Reform Models to Improve Reading Achievement: A Longitudinal Study of Direct Instruction and Success for All in an Urban District.

This research examined the effectiveness in an urban school district of 2 of the most widely used Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) programs-Direct Instruction (DI), implemented in 9 district elementary schools, and Success for All (SFA), implemented in 2 elementary schools. In examining impacts on student achievement and school change outcomes (e.g., teacher buy-in, school climate), a mixed-method research design was employed, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Student achievement results on the reading sections of the Ohio Proficiency Test and the Stanford Achievement Test showed that both DI and SFA schools performed comparably to other district schools after statistically adjusting for school and student variables. Qualitative measures indicated generally positive support for both models by teachers, principals, and parents. However, in the case of DI, findings indicated weaknesses in implementation due largely to uncertainties involving school versus district roles and inadequate training. Results are discussed with regard to the influences of contextual and implementation variables on judging CSR model effectiveness in general and for specific schools and districts.

Promoting Evidence-Based Education Practice and Better Student Outcomes through Improved Consumer Reporting.

The past two decades have seen an increased need for better consumer reporting in education. This has resulted in part from a variety of education initiatives sponsored by the US Department of Education (ED) and others. The initiatives have increased the number of school improvement options available to educators and encouraged—or sometimes required—that choices be guided by “scientifically-based research.”

Book Review of Success for All: Research and Reform in Elementary Education, edited by Robert E. Slavin and Nancy A. Madden

Before reading this book, I was tempted to ask, “Do we really need yet another publication on Success for All?” Robert E. Slavin and Nancy A. Madden, the authors/editors of Success for All: Research and Reform in Elementary Education have certainly proven themselves to be prolific, even relentless, advocates of the program that they have spent nearly 20 years developing and implementing. The research section of the Success for All (SFA) website represents only a partial listing of their recent publications, identifying more than 10 major studies, articles, or books on SFA and its related programs produced in the past 2 years.1 Despite this already existing wealth of information on SFA, there remains much to pique the interest of educators, researchers, policymakers, and fellow program developers in the nine chapters of Slavin and Madden’s most recent work. In the first two chapters, Slavin and Madden detail the history and research evidence in support of SFA in clear and straightforward language. They point out that from the beginning, SFA “has been first and foremost a program of research” (p. 17). They trace the evolution and evidence of the program’s effectiveness from 1987, when it was adopted in one Baltimore elementary school, to the present, when it has been implemented in more than 1,800 schools. The authors make clear that, like other developers of reform programs (Henry Levin, James Comer, Stanley Pogrow, Siegfried Engelmann, and E. D. Hirsch, Jr.), they are driven by a quest for social justice that can be achieved only by ensuring that all children receive an excellent education. They also do a nice job of outlining how SFA has been built on “everything we know about effective instruction, for ... providing students with a JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS PLACED AT RISK, 8(2), 271–277 Copyright